The Things Network announces it's 100th community world wide at SXSW

Today at SXSW The Things Network announces its 100th community with a total of 1000 community members supporting their global initiative of building a open and crowd sourced Internet of Things data network. Next to this milestone we see a huge increase in people creating IoT apps on top of the network.

With technology just a few months on the market it is possible for devices to be connected to the internet without 3G or WiFi. It is called LoRaWAN. The Things Network is on a mission to provide this technology globally through through their crowd sourcing initiative.

When Wienke and Johan presented the first idea of The Things Network in June 2015 it was presented to the IoT meetup group in Amsterdam. Little did they know that in the next 9 months, 100 more cities would be implementing the network in their area.

Their mission is to build a global open crowdsourced Internet of Things data network, owned and operated by its users.

Since we have covered Amsterdam in 6 weeks last year. We have been on fast growth world wide. We are very happy to annouce the 100th TTN community today at SXSW.

Wienke Giezeman - Initiator of The Things Network

From the beginning of 2016, the coverage of the network is growing exponentially. Currently, there are around 1000 people involved with the deployment of the network in over 40 different countries. This shows that we are working on something big.

The Things Network managed to launch a network covering Amsterdam in six weeks. Eight weeks later Sao Paulo, Boston, Buenos Aires, Kochi and Sydney were doing the same. They enable DIY-ers and citizens to build a carrier grade network using bottom up approach.In October 2015 they started spreading their network through a Kickstarter campaign. The production costs for 1000 LoRaWAN gateways and 2000 LoRaWAN development nodes, The Things UNO and The Things Node was crowdsourced.

Highlighting 5 fast growing communities

We crowdsourced a complete city-wide Internet of Things data network with the people of Amsterdam in 6 weeks using a new technology named LoraWAN™. Now we are launching our global campaign to repeat this in every city in the world.

Since the beginning of 2016 we have truly been living the vision we set out in the beginning to achieve. The Things Network is now present in 100 cities around the world which is great to see. From starting in Amsterdam in the month of August to now being present in all around the world, the response is truly amazing.

Kanata (Ontario)

"I am Wojciech Tryc, from Kanata, Ontario, Canada. I am CTO for one of the local telecommunication company and naturally I am following the latest and greatest technologies and initiatives. The City of Kanata is also known as Silicon Valley of the North. With all incredible talents around here, many people are working on the next "Big Thing". Let's accelerate this process and bring us to the next level by providing a free IoT network to creative individuals and companies."

Wojciech Tryc from Kanata

The City of Kanata is also known as Silicon Valley of the North. With all incredible talents around here, many people are working on the next "Big Thing". Wojciech there is working on the second phase which will add alpha, beta and gamma radiation measurements. The intention here is to produce inexpensive set of sensors for ordinary citizens, which could provide pollution etc information for a City. The accuracy, will not be great, but high number of affordable devices

per City will allow for observing trends.

Tehran (Iran)

In the next decade, IoT will be one of the most significant areas to help mankind with innovative solutions, so it is necessary to supply creative people with what they need in their way. We believe providing an open IoT access network by crowdsourcing will be a key factor to remove barriers in this way and to bring the spirit of innovation to the telecom industry. We imagine a day in that the successful teams who used this open network, become sponsors to extend this movement to other cities!

Ali Rahmanpour from Tehran

Ali Rahmanpour along with Erfan Taherkhani and Dr Mohammad Razavizadeh in Tehran have been part of The Things Network since early 2016. Their plan is to provide an open Internet of Things network in Tehran by crowdsourcing to supply creative people for future. They should go live in the next one month after the arrival of the first gateway.

They have gained good support from the local people there. With their first meetup event last week they will be looking to get more traction in form of hackathons and collaboration.

Montreal (Canada)

The Montreal Internet of Things Alliance (MIOTA) is a proud participating community of The Things Network. MIOTA is tasked with building the very first global, crowdsourced Internet of Things data network within the city of Montreal. It will be free and open source.
Their purpose is to drive adoption of IoT in Montreal, regroup Montreal’s key IoT players, and enable business opportunities within the Montreal ecosystem.

The alliance will provide tiered memberships to individuals and businesses, which will grant access to the most up-to-date resources, news, training & technology in an effort to support new business, increase presence, create opportunities, encourage collaboration and assist with investment in IoT.

San Diego (US)

Travis Good, Chairman of Rokonbok Education, Producer of Maker Faire San Diego, Co-chair of MakerCon. Between students at universities, employees of local telecom industry (anchored by Qualcomm), and the hardware hackers the community in San Diego has access to the best local support. Providing a low cost platform on which to build and run IoT product is where they would like to go by removing a major cost impediment to innovation.

Calgary (Canada)

Calgary is a progressive, technology-savvy city that can take advantage of the technology to make the city better for all. Corey Lea and Christopher Leong are the co-initiators for the community which is looking into a free and open network built by the people for the people.

Just started a month back they are building a DIY gateway and hosting events to spread the word around.

Use cases you want to build: looking forward to the ideas the people will bring! Use cases include: Environmental monitoring (air quality, noise levels), educational partnerships with local schools, colleges & universities, find my thing

Internet of Things Apps

At the moment all kinds of use cases are created by the community members.

Whats coming next?

The journey so far has been really exhilarating and we look forward to continue on our mission in the upcoming months. Thanks to all the amazing supporters and contributors without whom this wouldn't really be possible. Stay tuned for more exciting updates coming your way. Here's a small message from Mark Stanley, initiator of the Reading community in UK.